


No Quarter Here

by Ithika



Series: Remorseless [6]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 17:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3777415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithika/pseuds/Ithika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Vane was a man notorious for his remorseless brutality, feared by friend and foe alike. Insubordination upon the Ranger is met with terrible wrath and swift retribution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Quarter Here

**Author's Note:**

> Two of a series of drabbles written to explore and expand upon the character of Charles Vane in Black Sails. This focuses on Vane on the Ranger. What little we know of Vane from history paints a portrait of a man near as terrifying and unforgiving as Blackbeard himself, and I wanted to begin to explore this side of him in writing.

He took a long, deep drag from his dying cigarette, feeling the smoke’s familiar burn as it seared its way into his lungs.  It didn’t soothe the captain, the tobacco, not today. Today, it was habit - there was no sawing the edges from this black mood. 

He blew a smoke ring over his raised hand, considering the spent cigarette, turning it in his fingers before looking at the beaten man before him. Charles let his gaze drop to the wretched creature, who was staring up at the captain through the one eye that was not swollen shut from the beating he’d been dealt. 

“Mercy, captain.” 

Charles smiled a slow, small, dangerous smile at that, and he dropped to his haunches before the disgraced crewman. He rubbed at a new scab on his cheekbone, the dried blood covering a wound still fresh, received on the  _Ranger’s_ latest hunt. 

“Mercy.” Said so quietly it was little more than a breath, a whispered and secret thing shared between the two men. The captain’s intense eyes stared down at the prostrate man before him, unflinching, unblinking. Not seeing the grievous damage done, not caring. “We lost two men yesterday.”

The sailor flinched away from Vane’s words as if struck. he said nothing, made no sound. Barely breathed. 

“And where were you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. There was no answer. No defense for desertion, no possible mitigation to this offence. Slowly, curiously, Charles buried the still-glowing embers of the cigarette into an open wound on the sailor’s leg. He shrieked, so Vane backhanded him. Not hard, not really. But hard enough. 

“Who the fuck are you to ask me for mercy when your brothers died on deck as you cowered below?” He spat. “Fuck you.” 

“Please.” 

Viper-quick, his face was inches from the wounded man’s, and his gaze supplied his answer. There was no quarter here. Calloused hands lifted him bodily, and he was dragged up on deck.  There was no fight left in him - no more protest, no more screams. 

The men had started the job, but Charles would finish it. A long length of rope, attached to a cleat on the forecastle, was tied securely around the man’s torso by the captain, who only then addressed his watching crew. 

“This man thought we should fight and die while he cowered in the hold. He thought himself good enough to sail on the  _Ranger_ without lifting a sword.” A pause. The crew watched on in unease, for the man had been an able cook and was popular with the men, despite his crime. “There are no pardons on this ship for cowards.” The captain’s last words brooked no argument, and no protest was offered. 

With no more thought given to the living dead man at his feet, Vane hefted him bodily into the sea, the rope following after him as he was pulled beneath the  _Ranger’_ s keel. 

“Be about your business. We make port in two days.”


End file.
